Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1887-07-04
The Tombs of Athens.


Parthenon a proverb of architectural grace
has given us the most dignifed and tender
memorial stones the traveller can see. Near
ly all the monuments preserved at Athens
are in white marble, in the ivory-Iike Parian
OF yet more lovely Pentelic, with its grain
and glitter like newly fallen snow. Their
antiquity is great; one at any rate of those
still in stu, that of Hegeso, belongs to the
grand fifth century that began with the Per-
sian and ended with the Peloponnesian war.
Their commonest forms are the adiculse
(shrine shaped, and tall narrow upright
slabs, with some richly chased funeral urns
and a few columns. The edicule are like
the shrines with pictures of the Virgin look
ing down on street corners in medieval Italy,
but they very shallow, generally only a
few inches deep and filed with sculpture in
high or low relief.
The most striking alto-relievo is that of
Dexileus, whose inscription records that he
was only twenty years old when he died, and
'Fof the Five Knights of Corinth.' The
mention of the five knights upon Lis tomb
was evidently to have been a deathless glory
to Dexileus-as eloquent in its day as Nell
sons inscription in st. Pauls, which con-
cludes with recording not that he died upon
sIch day, but that Trafalgar was fought on
such day. Once Dexileus moved in all his
panoply of g1ittering bronze; to this day we
see him proudly seated upon his rearing
horse and raising his hand to give the coup
de grace which the tramp1ed foe is raising
his arm to parry Now he is safe; for the
spear has fallen from the eonqueror's hand
The monument itself tells us more than the
inscription; and yet it is by no means the
most characteristic touching of the stones.
The typical and most impressive edicula
subject is the dead person bidding farewell
to friends; sometimes seated (though the
friends never are), sometimes standing up
and shaking hands. In the National muse
um are preserved some exquisite specimens
of this subject. Attitude and expression
alike are full of the noblest dignity and
grave tender sorrow. Now it is grown up
family receiving the farewell of their father,
and now an old father who sees a son in the
| flower of his manhood going before him.
Some of these reliefs contain exquisite Greek
profiles, little inferior to those which Phidias
has left US on the frieze of the Parthenon.
And the whole idea strikes one as being SO
| appropriate-thi portraiture of the dead
and their kin bidding farewell; the dead not
| being represented wasted by disease, but
| in full beauty and grace and health. Very
| natural are others of these Athenian monu-
ments; children often being represented
| with their pet dogs or toys, ladies with their
Jewel cases or at their toilet, but these are
vastly inferior in point of sentiment. This
| is what spoils the monument of Hegeso men
toned above. Hegeso is exquisitelY beauti-
| full and most beautifully carved, but spoiled
by triviality; for she is represented ''leisure-
ly examining the contents of casket held
before her by female slave"
The urn-shaped monuments, which some
times stand several feet high some of
| them exquisiteiy beautiful, made of white
| marble in shapes of airy grace, with delicate
chasing. The slabs are taller and narrower
| and thicker than any we see in modern Eng
| lish cemeteries; one might almost call them
marble beams; columns are rare.
Nowhere is the strange contrast between
ancient and modern Athens brought out
more forcibiy than by these tombs. For
one steps just across the road from the new
railway station for the Pireus into the street
of tombs, whittier they carried their dead
from the days of Themistoeles onwards, into
the Ceramicus familiar to the readers of Aris-
tophanes. This street of tombs is not quite
like the streets of tombs at Rome or Pom
peii; the Hns is not well kept; there are 9TH
er tombs scattered around the main line.
Among them rises the modern Greek church
of the Hagia Triada (Holy Trinity, a poor
little chapel (as most modern Greek churches
| are-the external dimensions of the late ca
| thedral are only forty feet by twenty five
| feet.)
| Close by them are some considerable re-
mains ot the city of the Violet Crown-the
| Sacred Gate, the Dipylum double gate), a
fine fragment of the city wall, one of the
| main drains, and the foundations of some
very ancient houses, one of them supposed
| to be anterior to the Persian war. While ex-
amining these the traveller may stumble
upon one of the most exquisite pieces extant
of ancient Greek work-a couch perhaps
seven feet long by two and half wide, in
| pure white Pentelic marble, delieately carved
| and quite perfect except for a small corner
| broken off in excavating it. So deftly it is
| carven that it looks as soft as velvet; but yet
| it is left Just where it has been exhumed-on
a waste piece of ground, the playground of
| the very poorest
| The modern cemetery is also well worth a
visit. For trees and flowers have run riot in
it until it looks like an ancient garden be-
come a wilderness. Peering through these
fangles of roses and periwinkles are tombs of
snowy marble, many of them in conspicu-
| ously good taste, though the beautiful ediculae
| so dear to the ancient Athenians are too rare
| here. And yet the modern Greeks, like the
ancients: are fond Of perpetuating the fea-
| lures of the tenant of the tomb. One of the
| prettest of the designs is the ancient device
of the angel extinguishing torch; but none
| of them approach in solemnity or beauty the
farewell scenes preserved in the museum.
One would like to inger and inger in this
| cypress -shadowed garden of tombs. But
| when the sun goes down behind the historic
hills it is too cold to sentimentalize in the
months during which the stranger haunts
| Athens.